Posts Categorized: author interview

Two months ago, I was invited to attend a lunch to meet author Sabaa Tahir and to watch the filming of the trailer for her book An Ember in the Ashes. The shoot took place here in Los Angeles, and while I’ve been on location before as a film publicist, this was the first time I’ve ever walked into a studio filled with smoke! It was a dark, moody setting that suited the book perfectly, since the story follows an orphan named Laia who risks her life to save her brother Darin, who’s held captive by a brutal empire. The actress who played Laia was friendly and chatty, and she showed us the scar painted on her shoulder. It’s an important and serious part of the book, so it was cool to see the attention to detail in the make-up and costumes. The Kommandant was small, blonde, and totally badass… Read more »

The day before Comic-Con last month, Leigh Bardugo, Marissa Meyer, Ann Aguirre, and Anna Banks went to the Barnes and Noble at The Grove in Los Angeles for a panel, and I got to interview them (in the employee break room) before the panel started. It had been a crazy week for me–I had a lot of work to get done for a project I’ve been working on for over a year, I was leaving the following morning for the convention, I had a bronchial infection (I wasn’t contagious, but I was taking antibiotics, steroids, and that awesome cough syrup with codeine in it)… and Obama was in town. If you don’t live somewhere where presidents visit for fund raising, it’s hard to understand how badly having them in town can completely destroy the traffic system, but it’s really something. Major streets along his route are completely shut down,… Read more »

The Grisha series is beloved by every single reviewer at The Midnight Garden, so we’re tremendously excited for the release of Ruin and Rising on June 17th, 2014. Can you believe it’s almost here? As part of the official blog tour for the book, I sat down with author Leigh Bardugo for lunch at Mari Vanna, a beautiful, relaxed restaurant in West Hollywood named after a Slavic fairytale grandmother who welcomed hungry travelers for a home-cooked meal. Since the trilogy is set in Ravka, a world inspired by Russia, the setting could not have been more perfect for this interview. We were seated outside in the lovely garden patio, with birdhouses hanging from the trees and a samovar fountain right next to our table! At one point, a bird flew in and drank from it, and we were thoroughly charmed. Originally we’d talked about meeting up after the book was… Read more »

YAuthor Talk is a monthly feature where we ask our favorite authors 5 random questions just for fun! Join us for bookish musings, crazy tangential conversations, and more. This month we’ve got the author of one of the two books all four of us Midnight Gardeners named as one of our Favorite Books of 2013: Katja Millay, who penned the heartbreaking and beautiful The Sea of Tranquility. 1. If you could be any YA hero/heroine, who would you be and why? There are so many YA heroines I respect and admire for one reason or another, but although I think it might be nice to be like them, I don’t think I could handle actually being them. I’d love to lay claim to their skills and personality traits – and, yes, if I’m being completely honest, their love interests – but they’re often put through such a… Read more »

Gather around, friends. We are so pleased to welcome one of our favorite people to the blog today, the magical Claire LeGrand, author of The Year of Shadows. It’s a lovely middle grade ghost story that will be out in stores tomorrow! Claire’s here as part of the official YOS blog tour, and she’s joined by her editor Zareen Jaffery from Simon and Shuster BFYR (who just visited us last week!) for a Author-Editor Interview. Claire and Zareen ask each other questions about their careers, their daily lives, inspiration, ghosts, and so much more. We’re also giving away a beautiful finished hardcover of the book, so read on! ~ Wendy CLAIRE interviews ZAREEN Claire: First of all, hi, Zareen! Zareen: Hi, Claire! (And Wendy! And blog readers!) C: Can you tell us a little about you as an editor? What made you decide to pursue this as a career? Z: When… Read more »

I’m so pleased to welcome one of my favorite authors to blog today! Laura Whitcomb’s writing is so gorgeous you can practically feel your soul lifting out of your body. We reviewed her latest book Under the Light last week, which is the thoughtfully rendered sequel to A Certain Slant of Light. Today, Laura chats with us about how this sequel evolved, as well as the unusual way the story came to her. We’re also giving away two sets of both books in the series, so that readers who haven’t discovered these books yet will have a chance to read them! Please help us welcome Laura to The Midnight Garden. ~ Wendy———————————————– Q & A with Laura Whitcomb How would you describe your Light series to someone who’s never read it? In book one, ghosts fall in love and borrow the abandoned bodies of two teenagers so they can be together…. Read more »